A non-existent monument and non-existent victims? : on Polish rival postmemory

The article presents a case study of a yet-to-be-realized queer monument in Warsaw, a project that originated in 2007. The monument was intended to commemorate the alleged non-existence of nonheteronormative victims of both Nazi and communist persecutions. The author examines the controversies surrounding the project and analyzes the responses from the media, politicians and Internet users, who are viewed as various types of mnemonic actors. While acknowledging valid criticisms leveled at the project, the article also explores manifestations of "Polish rival postmemory," a notion derived from Marianne Hirsch's concept of "postmemory" and Michael Rothberg's "multidirectional memory." To illustrate the mechanism whereby the process of revictimization replaces commemoration, the article also references the concepts of "mnemonic wars" and "mnemonic mobilization.

Homosexual reverse catastrophe : "The Men with the Pink Triangle" and "Damned Strong Love"

The article offers in-depth, critical analysis of the books "The Men with the Pink Trian gle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps" by Heinz Heger and "Damned Strong Love: The True Story of Willi G. and Stefan K." by Lutz van Dijk, touching upon the topic of Nazi persecutions of homosexuals. Both texts are being presented as matrix testimonies, which not only widened the Second World War discourse by introducing the homosexual victim, but also initiated homosexual variant of what Przemysław Czapliński's called the "reverse catastrophe". Although concentrating precisely on male war-time experience, the texts significantly exceed the dominant, male-centered narrative pattern. By discussing the issues such as ambiguous authorship, differences between narrative strategies, brutalization of the language and the authors' attitudes towards body, sexuality or violence, the article demonstrates - thus far seldomly considered - "catastrophic potential" of the publications. Attention is also being drawn to the fact that by virtue of their existence, homosexual war-time experience no longer has to be considered - to use Sławomir Buryła's term - "non-verbalizable"

Irishness and busking - Glen Hansard’s artistic habitus

The article analyses how crucial the Irish origin and long-term busking experience were in shaping the artistic habitus of Glen Hansard. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology and Benedict Anderson’s characteristic of “imagined communities”, the author presents the variety of ways in which Hansard’s “habitus of the Irish busker” reveals itself. Seen from the perspective of the sociology of art, the artist’s statements, lyrics, music videos, projects and social initiatives reflect the point of view of a niche artist, strongly dissociating himself from the “entertainment” sector. They also show how grounded Hansard’s position in the artistic field was before his unexpected 2007 Oscar win for Best Original Song.The article analyses how crucial the Irish origin and long-term busking experience were in shaping the artistic habitus of Glen Hansard. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology and Benedict Anderson’s characteristic of “imagined communities”, the author presents the variety of ways in which Hansard’s “habitus of the Irish busker” reveals itself. Seen from the perspective of the sociology of art, the artist’s statements, lyrics, music videos, projects and social initiatives reflect the point of view of a niche artist, strongly dissociating himself from the “entertainment” sector. They also show how grounded Hansard’s position in the artistic field was before his unexpected 2007 Oscar win for Best Original Song

Crisis rapping : #Hot16Challenge2 and the boundaries of the artistic field

Artykuł jest próbą kulturoznawczej analizy internetowego zjawiska #hot16challenge2, pierwotnie stanowiącego reakcję środowiska polskich raperów na kryzys wywołany wybuchem pandemii SARS-COV-2. Wykorzystanie słownika terminologicznego autorstwa Pierre’a Bourdieu (pole, dystynkcja, autonomia) oraz pojęcia kapitału medialnego (capital médiatique) Patricka Champagne’a w krytycznym namyśle nad wybranymi przykładami powstałych w ramach akcji utworów pozwala odpowiedzieć na pytanie, dlaczego włączenie się w inicjatywę innych artystów, przedstawicieli władz czy reprezentantów polskiej sceny politycznej spotkało się z wyraźną dezaprobatą zarówno pomysłodawców, jak i odbiorców, a w niektórych przypadkach zaowocowało wręcz stratami wizerunkowymi.The article offers a culturally oriented analysis of the online phenomena called #hot16challenge2, which emerged as Polish rappers’ reaction to the crisis caused by the outbreak of SARS-COV-2 pandemic. Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical dictionary (field, distinction, autonomy) and Patrick Champagne’s concept of "capital médiatique" are used to critically analyze chosen examples of the rap songs created for the purpose of the action. It enables the author to answer the following questions: why did the fact that other artists, authorities and representatives of Polish political scene had joined the initiative meet with disapproval expressed by both the originators and recipients, and why did it tarnish the image of some participants

He Said to Me: “Liebling”. A Queer Reading of the Camp Memoirs of Janusz Karwacki

As part of a relatively new notion — “queering Holocaust studies” — the article deals with the issue of nonheteronormative forms of sexuality among Polish male former concentration camp prisoners. The analysis of selected excerpts from Mieczysław Karwacki’s book Życie wśród śmierci [lit. Life among death] (1999) is conducted with the use of the queer category as well as scholarly reflection on the topic of wartime sexuality. This strategy shows how crucial transgressive themes (concerning the homo- and heterosexual experiences of the author, touching upon his physicality and masculinity) are for the book, and how the author challenges the constraining, binary division into “female” and “male” topics of concentration camp literature. A queer reading of the book by Karwacki — someone hitherto anonymous, unknown to both readers and researchers — reveals the need to split open the martyrological, heteronormative model of war memoirs and to incorporate this kind of content into concentration-camp discourse in Poland

Manipulated memory : right-winged meria narratives about homosexual prisoners of concentration camps

The article offers a critical interpretation of the chosen online activity of right-wing journalists and Internet users that seem to sympathize with this political option. Selected Tweets and articles are understood as exemplifications of either intentional, unconscious or ignorance-caused manipulations of memory, its object being homosexual prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps. Placing selected Tweets in a broader social, political, as well as historical context, the author shows the discursive exclusion of this group of the Nazi’s “forgotten victims” in the Polish media sphere, (re)producing the negative only image of homosexual prisoners and the tendency to falsely identify camp homosexual violence with camp homosexuality as such.The article offers a critical interpretation of the chosen online activity of right-wing journalists and Internet users that seem to sympathize with this political option. Selected Tweets and articles are understood as exemplifications of either intentional, unconscious or ignorance-caused manipulations of memory, its object being homosexual prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps. Placing selected Tweets in a broader social, political, as well as historical context, the author shows the discursive exclusion of this group of the Nazi’s “forgotten victims” in the Polish media sphere, (re)producing the negative only image of homosexual prisoners and the tendency to falsely identify camp homosexual violence with camp homosexuality as such

Pride, shame, profanation : post-memory in the movies Bent and Paragraph 175

This paper offers a post-memory oriented analysis of the movies Bent (1997) and Paragraph 175 (2000), both referring to the so-called pink triangles-homosexual men persecuted by the Nazis. The author reverses Marianne Hirsch’s key concept in order to introduce a new one, "the generation of homosexual post-memory". Theoretical categories of dignity, shame, and profanation are used contextually, to comment on the main themes of the movies and their com-mon interpretations. Seen through the post-memory perspective, films under discussion become substitutes of direct, familial narratives, which for years re-mained inaccessible due to binding law, social taboos, “institutional homopho-bia”, and sustained “days of masquerade”. Even though it may not seem obvious at first, the text presents that both titles have the potential to activate the process of trauma transfer and create homosexual post-memory as such

The bodies of Zuzanna Ginczanka

The article focuses on the representations of the body in Zuzanna Ginczanka’s poetry. There are four crucial poetic constructions in this respect that need to be properly contextualized: the Jewish body (Ginczanka’s beauty and stigma, her legendary eyes), the lyrical body (the feminine origin of her poetry, its erotic, emancipatory character, the meaning of victim and revenge themes), the individual and the social body (the ways of shaping her identity and some of her key performative gestures), and, fi nally, the visual body (the poet’s public image in the past and now). Aside from Bożena Keff’s and Agata Araszkiewicz’s discussions of Jewishness in Ginczanka’s poetry, the article refers to Erving Goffman’s, Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Richard Schechner’s theories to illuminate the complex mechanisms behind Zuzanna Ginczanka’s ambiguous position in the literary and cultural discourse through the years

Male Concentration Camp Homosexuality, the Figure of Pipel and the Issue of "Unreadability" in Andrzej Kotarski’s Testimonies

Artykuł o charakterze case study analizuje treści dotyczące męskiej homoseksualności i figury pipla, pojawiające się w dwóch relacjach złożonych USC Shoah Foundation i Domu Spotkań z Historią/Ośrodkowi KARTA przez Andrzeja Kotarskiego, byłego więźnia nazistowskich obozów koncentracyjnych. Krytycznej refleksji poddane zostają: sposób podjęcia tematów zmarginalizowanych w polskim dyskursie obozowym oraz strategie służące przezwyciężeniu problemów artykulacyjnych. Osadzenie analizy w kontekście badań nad wojenną przemocą (homo)seksualną pozwala wskazać kulturowo-społeczne determinanty, za sprawą których obie relacje pozostają niepełne.The article is a culture-oriented case study aimed at a critical analysis of threads concerning male homosexuality and the figure of the camp pipel. The subject of the analysis are two oral history narratives by Andrzej Kotarski (given to: USC Shoah Foundation and History Meetings House/the KARTA Center), a former Nazi concentration camp inmate. Attempts by the witness to take up marginalized topics in the camp discourse are set in the context of the current state of research on male wartime sexual violence. The use of the appropriately reformulated cat-egory of unreadability by Jessica Lang, the discussion of the role of laughter and the (originating from camp times and memoirs) strategy (originating from camp times and fixed in memoirs) of self-feminization of the male victim reveal a num-ber of cultural and social reasons, due to which both narratives remain incom-plete. Nevertheless, they are an invaluable testimony to the camp’s homosexual violence and, at the same time, the problems related to its articulation

The habitus of Irish busker in the face of commercial consecration : the analysis of Glen Hansard's artistic image in the light of Pierre Bourdieu's theory

W oparciu o źródła takie jak wywiady prasowe, telewizyjne i internetowe oraz innego rodzaju treści, artykuł identyfikuje i poddaje analizie zmiany w artystycznym wizerunku Glena Hansarda - irlandzkiego muzyka, wokalisty i tekściarza - do których doprowadziło zdobycie przez niego statuetki Oscara za Najlepszy utwór (Falling Slowly) w roku 2007. Wykorzystanie słownika terminologicznego Pierre’a Bourdieu (pole, autonomia, heteronomia i in.), suplementowanego rozpoznaniami polskich socjolożek i socjologów sztuki (Anna Matuchniak-Krasuska, Agata Bachórz, Krzysztof Stachura), pozwala objąć krytyczną refleksją m.in. nieoczywisty stosunek laureata do komercyjnego sukcesu, liczne rozbieżności pomiędzy jego percepcją i auto-percepcją oraz zjawiska mitu bezinteresowności i fetyszu nagrody, stanowiące przykład skrajnie odmiennego rozumienia powinności artysty.Source materials such as press, TV and online interviews, along with different kind of content, are being used in the article to identify and comment on the changes in Glen Hansard’s -Irish musician, singer and songwriter - artistic image, which were caused by winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song (Falling Slowly) back in 2007. Supplementing Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical dictionary (field, autonomy, heteronomy etc.) with the critical reflections of Polish sociologists of art (Anna Matuchniak-Krasuska, Agata Bachórz, Krzysztof Stachura) makes it possible to critically analyze the following issues: non-obvious attitude of the artist towards his commercial success, numerous discrepancies between his perception and auto-perception, as well as the phenomena of "the myth of selflessness" and "the fetish of the award" - each of which represents highly contrasting understanding of the artist’s devoir